Of all the ways in which we try to reduce Islamophobia, which works best?

After establishing a link between collective blame of Muslims and anti-Muslim attitudes and behavior, we used an ‘interventions tournament’ to identify a successful intervention (among many that failed). The ‘winning’ intervention reduced collective blame of Muslims by highlighting hypocrisy in the ways individuals collectively blame Muslims – but not other groups (White Americans, Christians) – for individual group members’ actions. After replicating the effect in an independent sample, we demonstrate that a novel interactive activity that isolates the psychological mechanism amplifies the effectiveness of the collective blame hypocrisy intervention and results in downstream reductions in anti-Muslim attitudes and anti-Muslim behavior.

“... On Radio Times, host Marty Moss-Coane talked with Emile Bruneau, research associate and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications, [and others] about the best ways to understand people whose opinions you do not share.” (Newsworks, May 23, 2017)

A brief clip in which Emile discusses his postdoctoral work at Rebecca Saxe's lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. (11/23/15)

"What role does group identity play? Does authority make us passive or just reinforce our belief that we are right? How much of our empathy is innate and how much is instilled in us by our environment?

In the past two decades, with the advent of f.M.R.I. technology, neuroscientists also began to tackle such questions. Emile Bruneau [...] is trying to map when and how our ability to empathize with one another break down, in hopes of finding a way to build it back up." (NYT Magazine, March 19, 2015) Full article here.

Collectively blaming groups for the actions of individuals can license vicarious retribution. Acts of terrorism by Muslim
extremists against innocents, and the spikes in anti-Muslim hate crimes against innocent Muslims that follow, suggest that
reciprocal bouts of collective blame can spark cycles of violence. How can this cycle be short-circuited? After establishing a
link between collective blame of Muslims and anti-Muslim attitudes and behavior, we used an “interventions tournament” to
identify a successful intervention (among many that failed). The “winning” intervention reduced collective blame of Muslims
by highlighting hypocrisy in the ways individuals collectively blame Muslims—but not other groups (White Americans,
Christians)—for individual group members’ actions. After replicating the effect in an independent sample, we demonstrate
that a novel interactive activity that isolates the psychological mechanism amplifies the effectiveness of the collective blame
hypocrisy intervention and results in downstream reductions in anti-Muslim attitudes and anti-Muslim behavior.